88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary

by Grenier, Robert L.

  Bashir quickly saw through the ruse, and the countermanipulation began. Identifying McManus as an African-American, he recounted the history of the American civil rights movement in impressive detail. “Shame on you, Dr. Abraham,” he said. How could someone of his background assist in oppressing an innocent man? Over three hours of contentious conversation, they nonetheless established a certain rapport.

  “You need help,” McManus reminded him. “Would you rather speak with me, or with them?” They remained unidentified; Bashir agreed to be polygraphed.

  The questioning continued for two more days, interspersed with repeated polygraph examinations, but the environment was not at all what we wanted. Bashir was being handled very deferentially by the Pakistanis, and was allowed to return home at night. Unsurprisingly, he was not making any damaging admissions: he had met Mullah Omar, as expected, but denied ever having met bin Laden. Though both the polygraph and McManus’s experience told us Bashir was withholding information, we had nothing concrete to confront him with, and no idea what he might be hiding. The interrogations were going in circles. The Pakistanis’ patience was wearing thin.

  Then, while being questioned on October 30, Dr. Bashir had a sudden cardiac episode and collapsed in a heap. The Pakistanis summoned a doctor, who administered nitroglycerine and committed Bashir to a hospital for observation. The scientist seemed enfeebled. For the Pakistanis, that was the last straw. They were ready to call a halt to the proceedings, though I was insistent that the questioning continue. Assuming from my obduracy that I must have information I was not revealing, Jafar confronted me.

  “If you’ve got evidence, you need to show it.”

  Again, I sent a message to our European friends. Their suggestion was that we wait until Bashir’s release from temporary ISI custody, which seemed imminent, and approach him on our own with what we knew, threatening that we would reveal his past activities to Pakistani authorities unless he came clean on what he was withholding. This struck me as naive. Why would the UTN chief ever trust us not to take what we knew to the Pakistani authorities, and why, if confronted with past misdeeds, would he give us more damaging testimony to use against him—if indeed there was any? We would need to leverage the Pakistanis; this was where Bashir lived, and they were the only ones who could pose a credible threat to him.

  On the night of October 30, our sister station in the concerned capital set up a video teleconference with the counterpart service, so that I could explore an alternative approach. I suggested that we present their service’s information to the Pakistanis as though it were our own. And rather than cite the real method employed in collecting it, which had been devious, we would state that it had been acquired through a CIA bugging operation outside Pakistan. In short, I proposed to provide the Pakistanis with the truth by wrapping it in a bouquet of lies. Finally, the Europeans agreed.

  On November 1, I met with Jafar with a “white paper” in hand, and briefed him in detail on its contents. A few years previously, Bashir had met for two days in a Persian Gulf city with a mixed group of Arabs. He had provided them with a preliminary design for a dual power/desalination nuclear plant, as well as details on plutonium production at Pakistan’s Kushab reactor. A few months later, he met with them again, this time elsewhere in the Gulf. In the course of these discussions it became clear that UTN members had had similar talks with the government of Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi. Bashir was clearly interested in doing nuclear-related business, but for some reason there had been no follow-up meetings.

  Jafar’s reaction was immediate. If what I had briefed was true, Dr. Bashir had grossly violated the oath taken at the time of his retirement not to reveal details of his nuclear-related work. The general was embarrassed and angry. Jafar would be a full ally in getting to the bottom of this now, for reasons of his own.

  Beginning on November 3, after his release from the hospital, Dr. Bashir’s questioning was more focused, and less friendly. Confronted with precise and detailed information on his past dealings with the Arabs, he quickly acknowledged the Gulf meetings, and provided further details. He had no problems passing a polygraph examination concerning the completeness of his testimony. The nuclear-related meetings with the Middle Easterners had apparently gone nowhere. But on questions regarding his activities in Afghanistan, Bashir was still coming up “deception indicated,” in the polygraphers’ parlance.

  Rather than sending Bashir home that night, the Pakistanis permitted the questioning to continue. McManus, joined now by a colleague from Washington, was able to set up a tag team, and so maintain a constant, focused interrogation for forty-eight hours straight. This is what had set the stage for the pivotal November 4 briefing in my office.

  The two interrogators took their places on the couch, with Dave and me sitting across from them. As always, I closed the door.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s have it.”

  It had been an eventful day. A series of failed polygraph exams had made it apparent to Dr. Bashir that there was no easy way out. The unauthorized meetings in the Gulf had turned his Pakistani government hosts against him. No longer could he depend on the benefit of the doubt, or a presumption of innocence; now the presumption was one of guilt. He would have to tell more of the truth if he hoped to satisfy us.

  He had met Osama bin Laden in Kandahar, at a large dinner with many guests, in the spring of 2000. Introduced to the great man as an eminent nuclear scientist, Bashir had immediately been engaged by him in an intense conversation. The tall Saudi was very curious. Bashir explained to him the two paths to acquiring fissile nuclear materials—by enriching uranium, or by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel to isolate plutonium. They discussed how difficult it might be to build a nuclear bomb. Bashir referred to the first successful American effort of the 1940s—which he mistakenly termed “Fat Boy.” Bin Laden was also curious about chemical and biological weapons: How difficult were they to build? How effective were they?

  With bin Laden that evening was another Arab, whom we’ll call “Abu Zaydan.” Abu Zaydan didn’t say very much, but he visited Dr. Bashir the following morning. With him he brought a crude metal vessel, about the size of a birdcage. There was a view-port on one side, covered by a metal slide. In the bottom of the container was what appeared to be a small nugget of metal. Abu Zaydan indicated that the nugget was supposed to be radioactive; he believed it was uranium 235. Could Dr. Bashir identify what it was? The Pakistani scientist could not, but he doubted that it was fissile material. It seemed to Bashir that his Arab friends had probably been victims of some sort of nuclear scam, and that the nugget was a gamma ray source, of the sort used for medical imaging. He could provide no compelling reasons for his conclusion. Abu Zaydan told him nothing about where the nugget had come from. In response to Zaydan’s questions, Bashir hand-sketched a design for a crude nuclear device.

  Dr. Bashir met again with Abu Zaydan later that year, in the fall. They had further discussions. Beyond that, Dr. Bashir was vague. The Americans wanted to question him more, but the doctor was exhausted after two straight days. The Pakistani participants insisted that the session come to a close.

  Dave and I sat calmly throughout the exposition. We posed a few questions.

  “Write it up,” I said. I would want to see the distribution—the list of recipients—before the cable went out. We couldn’t know yet what these preliminary revelations might mean: perhaps a great deal, perhaps very little. Perhaps the contact with bin Laden and Abu Zaydan had amounted to talk, and little more. Perhaps today’s admissions were but a first installment in a nightmarish serial. In any case, there was likely to be considerably more to the story, and excruciating pressure on all of us to ferret it out. Just one thing was certain: This cable, when it hit Washington, would go off like a high-yield nuclear device.

  Chapter 23

  * * *

  THE PRODIGAL

  NOVEMBER 5, 2001

  AS THE SMALL PLANE made its long, shallow approach, I looked down warily at
the flat roofs of the densely packed houses. They ended abruptly at a high brick wall; just beyond, one could see the end of the runway. I had heard the stories of potshots being taken at U.S. planes on the glide path into Jacobabad Airbase. Given the base’s proximity to a well-armed local citizenry, I was happy to be aboard a Pakistani, and not an American, military aircraft.

  The ISI pilot taxied to a remote end of the base. We stepped out, and my logistics guys began wrestling heavy boxes to the tarmac. Not at all sure of the plan, I stood in the dusty breeze and waited.

  Presently, I saw a small car bouncing down the dirt road leading toward us, official flags fluttering from both fenders. The base commander got out and walked toward me stiffly, a swagger stick tucked under his right arm. I had been prepared for this. General Ehsan had offered to make the necessary discreet arrangements for us while telling the base commander as little as possible. The commander would not be pleased, he said, and would insist upon meeting me as a minimum indication of deference to his authority. After a rather formal welcome, the commander indicated that he had placed an empty building at the disposal of my team, as requested by General Ehsan. He then paused, as though waiting for some elaboration. I couldn’t be sure precisely what Ehsan had told him, but we had what we wanted, and the commander certainly wasn’t going to get anything further from me. I thanked him for his assistance and watched as he departed.

  I was surprised to find that our Afghan friends had been housed in a one-story abandoned school building. Blackboards lined the walls. Hamid Karzai was padding about in a shalwar khameez and running shoes. His six commanders lounged on cots. Several were eating tinned American beef stew, cold from the can. All stood and squinted curiously as Karzai rushed up to greet me and “Jeff,” my senior reports officer. Although we had figured prominently in one another’s lives in recent weeks, this was the first time the diminutive Pashtun leader and I had met.

  During the few days following his motorcycle-borne reentry of Afghanistan on October 8, we were provided only brief snapshots of the Popalzai chieftain’s progress, as he made sporadic sat phone calls to Greg. After the October 9 call, when he reported from eastern Kandahar Province that he could see and hear airstrikes during the night, we again heard from him on the 10th, this time from within Kandahar City itself: more airstrikes; still had not encountered any Taliban.

  The same day we received a curious cable from CTC/SO, lobbying for the quick introduction of a “foreign intelligence/unconventional warfare” team to join Karzai, though he was still moving essentially as a fugitive. Greg responded. “Hold that thought,” he said, in effect. Karzai had still not demonstrated that he could survive in Afghanistan, let alone control a defendable area or provide armed protection for an American team.

  Just a day later, Hamid had called Greg to say that he had been able to move a substantial distance northward, and was now in Tarin Kowt, the capital of his native Uruzgan Province. He indicated excitedly that he had about 400 fighters with him, and would need food and ammunition for them, urgently. Greg’s response was measured: To receive airdrops, Hamid would need to locate and mark a suitable area with fires at night. This would require close and detailed coordination with us; brief, staccato phone calls would not do. Hamid should send clear textual messages using the covert satellite communications gear we had provided him.

  On October 13, another excited message from Karzai: Now, he and 350 men had seized control of Tarin Kowt. They urgently needed a drop of weapons and ammunition in order to hold and defend it. This was unbelievably good news, but was accompanied by troubling reports from Kandahar. According to an excellent source, the Taliban were aware of Karzai’s presence in Uruzgan, and were dispatching a substantial force northward to attack him. I sent a strongly worded message to CTC/SO, pleading for them to arrange a military drop to resupply Hamid’s force before Taliban reinforcements arrived.

  Airdrops were already a huge source of frustration. At the start of the American bombing campaign, at the president’s behest, the U.S. military combined its initial strikes on al-Qa’ida and Taliban targets with drops of humanitarian aid to civilians. Out of fear of antiaircraft missiles—which, for all anyone knew, could include old U.S.-supplied Stingers provided years before to the mujahideen—American C-130s made these drops at night, and exclusively from high altitude. Drop packages blew far from the intended landing areas and broke up on impact, scattering supplies over a wide area and making them hard to recover. This obviously would not do for drops of weapons into small landing zones.

  I consulted with “Jim M,” a highly experienced paramilitary specialist who had worked for me at the Farm. I had brought him to Islamabad immediately after 9/11 to provide advice and serve as a liaison to the military. He explained to me that the U.S. Air Force riggers forward-deployed to Karshi Khanabad (“K2”) Airbase in Uzbekistan, from where these supply flights were being staged, had lost a lot of institutional expertise in making halo (high-altitude, low-opening) drops, and were unfamiliar with the latest technology and techniques, some of which had been developed by CIA. I was incredulous. Jim was no CIA chauvinist: he had excellent relations with Special Forces, understood and respected their capabilities, and only wanted to see the mission get done. If he said there was a problem, there was a problem.

  “Well, then, why can’t we send our specialists up to Khanabad and share with them what we know?” Jim’s eyes widened at that. Not possible; there was no way military riggers, who considered this their job and themselves the experts in it, would agree to have CIA come to instruct them.

  “Okay, well, let’s not say why they’re going. Why not send them there, let them rub shoulders with their military counterparts, and let nature take its course?”

  Jim shook his head. Wasn’t going to happen. I held my head in my hands. We risked losing an irreplaceable tribal ally due to our inability to make secure airdrops, and all because of bloody-minded interagency politics.

  I needn’t have worried: we didn’t have the materials in place to drop anyway.

  “What the hell?” I said to Dave. “Here these geniuses at Headquarters are pressing us for weeks to get southern tribals fighting the Taliban, and now that we have some, they can’t support them.”

  Headquarters responded to our October 13 plea, stating that materials earmarked for a “lethal drop” to Karzai would be moving from a stateside staging area in the southwestern United States to a European airbase on October 14 or 15. They would be ready to drop, they promised, by the 17th or 18th—provided, of course, that Karzai could survive that long.

  In the meantime, CTC/SO had other preoccupations. On October 13, they disseminated a formal intelligence report to the entire Washington policy community stating that UIFSA—the Northern Alliance—had captured Tarin Kowt. I was incredulous. Karzai was not a member of UIFSA and had received no support or direction from the Northern Alliance, which was in no position to help him anyway.

  Dave looked at me. “You don’t get it,” he said. “This isn’t about the facts. It’s about control. They control the relationship with the Northern Alliance. If they can pretend that Hamid is a member of UIFSA, they can use it to control this operation.”

  He was right, of course. So that’s why Hank was so interested in linking Karzai with Isma’il Khan, the UIFSA-connected warlord.

  “That’s crazy. It will be political anathema in the south if Karzai is seen as a member of the Northern Alliance. And beyond that, we’ve been working the south for two years. We know the terrain and the players. Greg has the relationship with Karzai. Those idiots can’t possibly micromanage this thing from thousands of miles away. We’re the only ones who can do this.”

  “That’s another thing,” Dave said. “You know Hank has been talking to Greg on the STU-III [secure phone]. I don’t like it. It’s sneaky.”

  “Don’t worry about Greg,” I said. “He gets it. He knows exactly how this needs to work. He’ll tell them exactly what he thinks, whether they want to hear it or not
.”

  By then, Greg and I had fallen into a pattern of late-night phone calls and e-mail exchanges, frequently laughing and commiserating about the aggressive philistinism of CTC. In one memorable exchange, after a particularly foolish directive, he’d sent me a frustrated e-mail at one in the morning, threatening to light himself on fire in the middle of the Jamrud Road.

  “Anyway, do you think I’m going to tell Greg he can’t speak to Headquarters except through me? That’s ridiculous. That’s what they’d do. Let Hank talk to Greg. If he thinks Greg is responsive to him, maybe he’ll give Karzai some support.”

  We sent a cable to Langley, giving it wide dissemination, formally pointing out that CTC/SO’s report was factually inaccurate and should be recalled. I was sure they’d appreciate the help and advice.

  Within days, the Taliban were pouring into Tarin Kowt and placing direct pressure on Karzai, as we had feared. It was increasingly difficult to track what was happening to him, as the frequency of his communications dropped off precipitately. The weapons package intended for him finally left the United States on October 16, well behind schedule; on the 19th, not having received any word on a drop zone, headquarters informed us it was diverting Hamid’s weapons for another recipient—CIA’s Team Alpha, accompanying Abdur-Rashid Dostum of the Northern Alliance, up in Mazar-e Sharif. Though headquarters was arguably responsible for Hamid’s current distress, I couldn’t blame them for the diversion; Karzai hadn’t been able to designate a drop zone while on the run. But God only knew when another weapons package would be available.

  Hamid finally contacted Greg on the 20th. He admitted that he and his fighters had never actually seized Tarin Kowt; they had only planned to do so. Now, with significant Taliban forces investing the area, he had been forced to change location three times in the previous five days. Worse, he frequently lacked facilities to recharge his sat phone, threatening his one lifeline to us.